The Middle East Monitor, October 29, 2013

US monitored 22 billion phone calls in one month in Afghanistan

fghanistan and Pakistan have the lion's share of monitored calls, with 21.98 and 12.76 billion respectively

Top secret documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden contains many such embarrassing facts about the US Government's spying operations.

Leaked documents have revealed that the US National Security Agency (NSA) monitored 124.8 billion phone calls in just one month earlier this year. Although most of the calls originated in the Middle East, a significant number were made from America's EU and non-EU allies. Three million of the calls spied on in January 2013 were made by American citizens within the United States.

According to information reported by Cryptome, the NSA monitored 7.8 billion calls in Saudi Arabia, the same figure as Iraq; the Saudi government has not commented on the issue yet. Afghanistan and Pakistan have the lion's share of monitored calls, with 21.98 and 12.76 billion respectively. In Europe, the US monitored a staggering 361 million calls in Germany, followed by France with 70.2 million and Spain with 61 million.

Close US allies Egypt and Jordan now know that 1.9 billion and 1.6 billion calls made by their citizens were monitored by the NSA.